Should I hire an agency, freelancer or build my own engineering team?
This question will always and should be asked before you start any project, startup or when you’re struggling or having problems with your team structure model. But to answer this question might not be as straightforward as you think. Some even consider, able to answer this question what distinguishes one is good or bad CTO, Head of Engineering or Tech Lead.
Most of the executives asking this question might be considering hiring or building an internal engineering team is the best way to go. The era of connectivity and the Internet have introduced new ways of hiring models. Moreover, the pool of developer talent is growing. It should be easy to find good talents, right? The answer is NO!
Most highly skilled developers get snatched up by huge companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, leaving you to select from a massive group of people who all have mostly similar talents and qualifications.
To find and hire the perfect in-house developer is an expensive endeavor. It requires persistence and even a little luck. Another option is to hire a remote developer for a specific project. Remote work and offshore developers is not an option anymore, but a necessity. Companies need to adapt and always prepare when remote work or working from home is the best solution. An instance just like a situation when this article is written, Corona force all companies around the globe to be able to work remotely. But bear in mind, hiring remotely comes with its own set of problems.
So how can you be sure that you’re getting the best performance available from each of these options? I have a set of rules of thumbs when trying to answer this question.
Do you have bad product visions and no budget?
The best solution, if you’re in this situation, is to hire a tech co-founder. But because you don’t have a budget to pay your tech co-founder you can give them your company, 40–50% shares.
Hire a tech co-founder, give them your company 40–50%
If you have a problem with giving your tech co-founder your company, then you have to learn to code and do the code your self. But it will be hard, and frustrating. Plus, high chance you gonna fail. You will focus on learning how to code instead of on more important things like marketing, networking, product validation or customer acquisition.
Do you have clear product visions and no budget?
Some of you might think you always know what you want to deliver. How the product will work, user journey, what is your target market, etc. But most of the time you actually wrong.
What I mean by clear product vision, is you already have done the validation phase, which might be achieved by did a comprehensive design sprint. But if you never did any validation phase, regardless of how smart you’re or might have 30 years of experience in the particular industry under your belt, you actually didn’t have a clear product vision yet. Regardless of what your peers told you, you have to admit you don’t have clear product visions.
If you’re very sure you have clear product visions, or even better you have UI/UX design or prototype ready, I would suggest you go with a freelancer model. Hire freelancers you already know starting from your circle, but not your family so when you have a technical problem you will not bring it into your dinner table. Make sure you pay based on task-based, not on time-based, by doing this you only have to pay them when they deliver a task so you will increase your success chance. If you couldn't find good freelancers from your circle, you can try to find one on:
Don’t forget to spend your time doing project management. If you don’t know how to manage a project, you can learn about Scrum project management from:
- https://www.scrum.org/
- https://www.edx.org/course/usmx-applied-scrum-for-project-management-2
- https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=scrum
if you still don’t understand how to do scrum after learning from online courses, maybe you should contact offline local scrum trainer instead.
Spend your time and money on project management
Do you have bad product visions and unlimited budgets?
If you in this situation, I would suggest hiring agencies, two agencies: software house agency and business savvy UI/UX agency. Never hire an agency that does both, engineering and UI/UX. These skills need a different set of mindset.
By hiring two agencies you can do cross-validation. For example, when your design is not feasible to deliver or has a bad flow, your software house agency will tell you. On the other hand, if your app is slow or didn’t work properly you can ask your UI/UX designer to give feedback or even solutions. Based on the dark management playbook it’s good to create conflict on this scenario, as long as you can control the chaos, your app will be battle-proven even before you launch the app.
It’s good to create conflict on this scenario, as long as you can control the chaos, your app will be battle-proven even before you launch the app.
If you have a question about why you should hire a UI/UX agency, the answer is simple, to help you validate your problem and solutions, by doing comprehensive design sprint and costumer validation, also they should give you an outsider view on the industry and competitors. Don’t hire a business or management consultant, since you will need to hire UI/UX agency anyway.
And make sure you understand Lean Startup by reading :
and learn about the design sprint :
Do you have clear product visions and unlimited budgets?
If you’re in this situation, you’re good to go. Just continue whatever you're currently doing, you already doing it right. Actually, the only time when I would suggest building your internal team is if and only if you’re in this situation, else don’t.
If you are still unsure, you can actually back up your reasoning with comprehensive Cost Analysis on Salary, Benefits for A Full-Time Hire, Taxes, Office Space and question your self “what am I gonna do if my business fails?”
